Larry Gigli (Affleck) is a muscle man for a young, up-and-coming thug in L.A named Louis (Vinito). He’s been tasked with kidnapping and holding Brian (Bartha), the mentally challenged brother of a federal prosecutor. The hope is that the kidnapping will put some pressure on the prosecutor to cut a deal on the prosecution of a friend of Louis’ back in New York. It seems, however, that Louis doesn’t think that Gigli is quite up to the challenge, so he hires Ricki (Lopez) to help Gigli make sure the job is done right. Ricki is pretty hot, but there’s a bit of a snag; she’s a lesbian. Will they be able to learn to work together?

Thomas (Donovan) has amnesia. Then he meets up with Isabelle (Huppert). She’s an ex-nun who has found her niche writing pornography. She vows to help him find out who he is and how he got amnesia. What he doesn’t know is that he is a pornographer who has made his wife, Sophia (Lowensohn), into a world-famous porn queen. It seems she’s been running because she thought she killed Thomas. His sordid past, not to mention some bloodthirsty henchmen, are going to go their best to kill him.

Molly (Murphy) has lived a very free lifestyle and she has never seen a party she didn’t like. There’s only one problem–she just ran out of money. Enter Roma (Locklear). She needs a nanny for her daughter, Ray (Fanning). Since Ray has been basically raised by an ever growing list of nannies, she’s very mature for her age. And, since Molly has essentially never had to grow up, she’s definitely lacking in maturity. The two will help each other find out that there’s more to life than what they know.

Well, this is not the best movie ever made. Murphy is playing a role that almost any actress her age could play blindfolded, and she’s having to overcome the “cute” factor of Fanning. The story follows a very popular formula in Hollywood, where the two people who have a huge gap between them grow together only to have their new found friendship put to the test and survive even stronger than before. Really, there’s nothing new about this one at all. They don’t even try to disguise the formula from you. There are no outstanding performances, although I have point out how odd it was that Heather Locklear was playing the role of the mother in this movie. Maybe it’s just me, but she still looks too good to be playing someone’s mother in a movie.

The DVD has some pretty weird special features on it. It’s like it tried to shoot for a demographic of living human beings between the ages of four and eighty-four. Kinda hard to pull off, as you might expect. First of all, there are two featurettes that really don’t give you any idea of what to expect from the movie whatsoever. Okay, let me be fair, the first, “The Lowdown on Uptown,” does talk about the movie a little bit, but only in the sense that it gives the cast and crew the opportunity to talk about how working on this movie changed their lives forever and that everyone who worked on it are the most creative people the world has ever known. The usual crap.

The other featurette is a little better than the first. It’s called “Rockin’ Style” and it focuses on the costume design for the movie. This featurette could have been better if the designer had attempted to create some kind of personality for the filming of it. No real surprises from the deleted scenes either. Had they not been cut, the movie would have been just as bad only longer. There is also one of those odd video slideshow of some behind-the-scenes stills. It doesn’t last long enough to be worth anything and some of the pictures don’t stay on the screen long enough to be seen.

Rent this one. It’s just not worth shelling out the dough to add it to your collection.

Released by: A&E/The History Channel.Rating: NR (some of the combat footage may be too much for little kiddos)Region: 1Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: War buffs should own.

Seven years after the end of World War II, someone at NBC thought it would be a good idea to get some of the footage that was taken during the war that had never been seen by the American public, edit it for television, and present it. This was unprecedented. Clocking in at twenty-six one-hour half-hour episodes, this documentary completely changed America’s outlook on the War. For the first time, they were shown American soldiers and sailors in the line of fire and, in some cases, being wounded or killed. It is for this reason that I put the warning on the ratings above that some of the images of dead bodies may be too much for younger audiences. When you add in the fact that the score was written by Tony and Academy Award winning composer Richard Rodgers and that it was narrated by Leonard Graves, this series couldn’t lose. (Editor’s Note: Please see Paul’s helpful correction below regarding the credit on the musical scoring for both Rodgers and Robert Russell Bennett.)

Written by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman, suggested by the novel by Isaac AsimovDirected by Alex ProyasStarring Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, Shia LeBouf, David Haysom, and Scott Heindl